Money/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby Moby taps a piggy bank that's on a table. Then he smashes the piggy bank with a hammer. The smashed pieces and money lay on the table. An annoyed Tim walks over to Moby. TIM: Hey, what happened?! MOBY: Beep. TIM: It fell? Off of what?! Tim reads from a typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, what is money? From, Pockzter. Money is, ah, well, money is, currency. You can buy stuff with it. Uh, this is harder than I thought. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Oh, right. Once upon a time, people lived off the land. Tim appears as a shepherd herding cows while his friend, Rita, milks a cow. TIM: We ate what we could find, or grow. Moby carries bags of grain to Tim. TIM: Greetings, neighbor. Barter or trade was one of the earliest transactions on Earth. The idea is pretty simple: One person may have plenty of cows, but no grain. COW: Mooo. TIM: Another person has grain to spare, but no milk. Tim stands with a cow while Moby carries grain and faces Tim. TIM: Hey, I sure could use some of that there grain. What say we trade this here cow for one of your sacks? MOBY: Beep. Moby nods and hands a sack of grain to Tim TIM: Markets let people trade on a large scale. Tim's friend, Cassie, trades with a man at a market. The market has grain, chickens, and other goods. TIM: But deciding, say, exactly how many chickens equals a cow is a problem. And if your cow is worth 10 chickens, but you only need five, then you're stuck. Tim appears next to pictures of a cow, an equal sign, and 10 chickens. TIM: Traders started using commodities like bags of barley as payment. A sign shows eight chickens, an equal sign, and five bags of barley. Then Moby appears carrying a cage full of chickens. TIM: But grain spoils, and bugs like to eat it. Traders needed some sort of token that would last. An animation shows the amount of barley in the bag decreases as bugs eat the barley. TIM: These cowrie shells were used as currency in central Asia and Africa. An image shows a cowrie shell. MOBY: Beep? TIM: In places far from the ocean, the shells were valuable because they were exotic, not to mention small and durable. An image shows a globe. TIM: Each part of the world developed its own preferred currency, like shell and bead necklaces, seeds, feathers, and salt. But feathers and seeds blow away, and salt is ruined by moisture. Images show necklaces, seeds, feathers, and salt. Then the resources illustrate what Tim describes. TIM: We needed something small, valuable, and long-lasting. Precious metals like gold and silver had value all over the world. An animation shows a girl holding a bar of silver and a boy holding a gold nugget. TIM: They were traded in pieces, and their value was determined by weight. Since weight varied from scale to scale, metal was weighed before every new transaction. An animation shows gold and silver being weighed on a balance scale. TIM: Eventually, someone came up with the brilliant idea to mark the metal's weight right on it. An animation shows the number "10" stamped onto a piece of gold using a hammer. TIM: We still use a version of these coins today. An image shows a bunch of pennies. TIM: Coins aren't always practical for big payments. They're heavy, and the people in line behind you get really annoyed. A clerk counts the coins Moby uses to pay for milk and an apple at a grocery store checkout counter. TIM: Paper money was invented to solve that problem. Tim holds up a paper bill. TIM: Originally, every note of paper money in the U.S. represented a quantity of gold held by the United States. We still use coins for small payments, and some people even barter now and again. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Sure, I'll lend you my bike, if you take out the trash for the next three weeks. Tim and Moby are standing near Tim's bike and the garbage can. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Okay, two weeks. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Okay, just this week. But that's my final offer. We use money to pay for goods, like food and clothing, and services like public transportation and entertainment. Images show a hamburger and jeans as examples of goods and a bus and movie theater as examples of services. TIM: Which brings me to an important point. Our currency has value because all of us agree that it does. Unlike animals, bags of grain, or gold nuggets, paper money doesn't have any other value except as currency. Images show Tim with a cow, a bag of grain, a gold nugget, and a dollar bill. TIM: So if everyone on Earth suddenly decided paper money wasn't worth anything, we'd be left with a whole lot of odd-sized paper pieces floating around. An animation shows Moby rolling dollar bills onto the wall as wallpaper. TIM: But for now, our system of money seems to work just fine. Tim looks at the pieces of the piggy bank Moby smashed on the table and the money inside of it. TIM: Well, it's just that I've been putting half of my allowance in that pig since I was eight years old. Moby reassembles the pig from its pieces. Category:BrainPOP Transcripts